A modern Sally Homemaker with a dash of crazy… well maybe more than a dash

Tag Archives: chicken breasts

As a tradition I always cook for my Mom for every special occasion. Christmas, her Birthday, Mother’s day, I always cook her dinner. It’s a tradition I stared when I started college and shortly after I moved out when I had no money and no idea what to buy her. When I was younger I would buy her stuff for the kitchen, but she didn’t use any of it much. Except for wooden spoons, for some reason we’re both always in need of more wooden spoons.

So, back to what’s important the food. While I tend to gravitate towards Asian food, the spicer the better, my Mom prefers pasta, the Olive Garden is one of her favorite restaurants. So pasta it was.

I decided to make a mild sauce pasta, my Mom prefers tomato based pasta’s and I prefer cheese based, so I compromised with wine. I had to eat it too. The side would be Bruchetta, who doesn’t like Bruchetta, and a desert of chocolate pie.

Happy Mother’s Day. I love you Mom.

P.s. For a vegetarian option exchange the chicken breasts for 1 lb of mushrooms.

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts

2 tablespoons butter

1 onion

2 tablespoons capers

½ cup white wine

2 cups whipping cream

1 box pasta

Salt

Pepper

I used penne, it’s my favorite kind of pasta, but you could easily substitute a different Italian pasta(not egg or udon noodles)

Trim any fat off of the chicken and cut it into approximately 1 inch pieces.

Melt the butter in a skillet under medium heat. Once butter has melted add the chicken pieces and season with salt and pepper in the skillet. This will season the butter as well which is going to be used in the next step.

Cook until the chicken is no longer pink in the center. Will take about 10 minutes. If you get impatient, and some of your chicken pieces start to get done, you can cut the bigger pieces in half with a wooden spoon by pressing down in the middle and wiggling the spoon back and forth a little.

While chicken is cooking, finely dice the onion and start making the pasta following the instructions on the box.

Once chicken has cooked completely, take out of the skillet but do not drain the skillet. Add the onion and capers to the skillet where you cooked the chicken. If some of the juice the capers are stored in get into the dish as well, don’t worry about it, it’s additional seasoning. Cook on medium to high heat for about 1 minute or until the onions start to soften, the onions will turn brown from the chicken drippings. Add the wine and turn the heat back down to medium. Cook, stirring occasionally until the wine reduces by half. Should take about 5 minutes.

Add the cream and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cream has thickened. To tell when the cream has thickened, stir immediately after addition and note how much resistance there is, should be similar to stirring milk. When the cream has thickened there will be a little bit of resistance and cream will not slosh in the pan as much. Should take about 10 minutes.

Drain the pasta and return it to the pot you cooked it in. After the cream has thickened pour it on top of the pasta and add the chicken. Stir to evenly mix.

If your pasta sauce is not as thick as you would like it, you can continue to cook the pasta after it’s all in one dish, stirring frequently to avoid the pasta burning on the bottom. Be very careful about this though, because your chicken will very quickly start to dry out.

As a poor graduate student, I don’t get eat out much, so one of the traditions my mom and I have is that once a week we go out to eat. One of our favorite restaurants is actually Panera. The first time I ever went to Panera, it was still the St Louis Bread Company, and my mom and I had made a trip to St Louis to see the Nutcracker. No judging, I was young.

It was one of our favorite places to eat every time we went to St Louis for years, usually for breakfast, and I was thrilled when a Panera opened in our city. We went there once a week for breakfast for several weeks before I got tired of it. It was quite a while before we went to Panera for anything other than breakfast, but eventually, we did try some of their entrees. My favorite, hands down, is the Cuban Sandwich.

I could almost have an affair with this sandwich, if one could have an affair with food. While I know it’s no gourmet food, and I’m probably getting snickers from the audience in larger cities, I really do love this sandwich. It’s one of the few things I can honestly say I could eat for more than three days in a row. And believe me, that’s saying quite a bit.

Today the Wickles steal the show from the Cuban though. This sandwich is all about the Wickles. I’m not one to preferentially use one brand over another, but I have not as of yet found another brand of pickles that can quite replicate these for flavor. They are like the Girl Scout cookies of pickles, one of a kind, but thankfully available all year round. Substitute the Wickless at your own risk.

Enjoy

Ingredients

Focaccia Bread

2 chicken breasts

8 ham slices

WICKLES

8 slices Swiss cheese

½ cup Sun dried tomatoes

½ cup Southwest Spicy Mustard

¼ cup miracle whip

¼ cup sour cream

½ teaspoon dried oregano

½ teaspoon ground chipotle

Oil for frying

(You can substitute Red Chili Powder if you don’t have ground chipotle but you will sacrifice flavor for heat. You can also grind your own chipotle chilies, but be careful since the smoke can make your throat and eyes sting.)

As you can see from the picture, I didn’t use focaccia bread. Really you can use any crusty bread for this dish, but it will change the taste of the final sandwich, and try not to use anything that is too puffy.

Trim off any fat that is on the chicken breast, and then cut it open, so it’s half as thick which will make it cook faster. Lightly salt and pepper each side of the 4 pieces of chicken.

Heat enough oil in a medium sized skillet to just cover the bottom of the pan over medium heat. Place the chicken breast pieces in the skillet so that they don’t touch. Cook, turning occasionally, until both sides are golden brown and can be easily pierced with a fork at its thickest part. This should take about 15 to 20 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, drain the sun dried tomatoes and combine with the mustard s in a blender and puree. You can substitute other mustards for the southwest, but you’ll probably need to add more mustard than tomatoes in order to balance the flavor.

In a bowl mix together the miracle whip, sour cream, oregano, and chipotle in a bowl. If you don’t have powdered chipotle, you can substitute red pepper, but it will have a hotter taste without being as flavorful.

After the chicken is done, turn off the skillet and reserve the chicken to a plate and let it cool slightly.

To build the sandwich, cut your bread in half. On one half spread liberally with the miracle whip mixture, and on the other half spread lightly with the mustard mixture. Be carefully, the mustard mixture will pack a punch.

Pick one half of the bread, and build on that one, don’t try to build on both. Stack: Chicken (cutting to fit the bread), two slices of ham, Wickless to cover, and two slices of Swiss cheese, cover with other half of bread.

Heat a sandwich press and press the stacked sandwich between the two plates until the cheese melts.

If you do not have a sandwich press, you can improvise by re heating the skillet you cooked the chicken in and placing the stacked sandwich in the medium of the skillet with a weight on it, such as a bacon press or another skillet, to hold it down. When you notice the cheese starting to melt, remove the weight, flip the sandwich, and replace the press. Cook for an additional minute or two to brown both sides of bread and you’re done.

Recipe makes 4 sandwiches, though you’ll probably have a little of both the miracle whip and mustard mixture left over, and takes about 45 minutes to an hour.

I know I just made a post about how I generally avoid recipes that have a page worth of ingredients, but it doesn’t count if half the ingredients are things I keep in my house. Right? Yah, that sounds like an excuse to me too.

Anywho, I really like Asian food, I mean what’s not to like. It’s hot, spicy (not always the same thing), it’s always served with either rice or noodles, and generally not the worst thing you could eat health wise. But notice I do say generally. This is because a lot of times really good Chinese food is fried. I do so love my fried foods.

It’s a shame I don’t have the metabolism of a high schooler any more and can’t just eat fried foods all day. Plus they tell me it’s bad for me, something about clogged arteries and heart attacks. To bad.

I’ve wanted to try to make homemade Chinese takeout for awhile, but the way of getting crispy chicken without deep frying it was eluding me. It all comes down to how you coat or bread the chicken. I got this idea for coating the chicken from here http://stuffcynloves.com/2013/05/03/best-general-tao-chicken-recipe/. It works really well as a pho-fried food breading.

Enjoy

Ingredients

1 cup cornstarch

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 tablespoons flour

2 eggs

1 cup panko

Chicken thighs or breasts

4 Tablespoons peanut butter

6 tablespoons soy sauce

1 Green pepper (sorry forgot to include in the picture)

1 package mushrooms, about ½ pound

2 sticks celery

4 green onions

2 heads brocoli

1 can crushed pineapple

6 tablespoons sugar

6 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon garlic powder

Oil for frying

If you’re working with chicken thighs, deskin and debone, and try to cut off any large chunks of fat. For either chicken thighs or breasts, cut into approximately 1 inch pieces.

Set up a line of three bowls. In the first bowl, pour 1 cup of cornstarch. In the next bowl mix together the 2 eggs, salt, baking powder, and flour which will make a thick goo. In the last bowl pour the 1 cup of panko. You can use breadcrumbs instead of panko, but the chicken won’t be quite as cruncy.

Dip each piece of chicken into first the cornstarch, then the egg mix, and finally the panko. Try to shake off any extra cornstarch before coating your pieces with the egg mixture.

Put just enough oil in a deep skillet to cover the bottom and heat under medium to high heat. After the oil is hot, put in the chicken pieces, evenly spaced and so they don’t quite touch.

Cook until panko starts to brown and then turn and cook on the other side. Make sure the chicken is cooked through and remove it from the pan, takes about 10-15 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking finely chop all your veggies and put in a big bowl, it’s a lot of veggies.

In a small mixing bowl add the peanut butter and 4 tablespoons of soy sauce. Mix a little, until the peanut butter is not a blob in a sea of soy sauce but it’s not going to make a smooth mixture. Pour the mixture onto the veggies and mix well.

Pour the veggie mix into the skillet and cook on medium to high heat stirring often until the veggies soften. Takes about 10 minutes.

While cooking the veggies mix in a suacpan the pineapple, sugar, apple cider vinegar, remaining soy cauce, cornstarch, and garlic powder. Mix in each ingredient one at a time beginning with the pineapple and mix well after every addition. Cook under low heat until everything is well incorporated, you’re difficult ingredient here will be the cornstarch. This really only takes 5 minutes or so.

After the veggies are soft turn heat down to low and add back in the chicken. Stir once or twice until the chicken is evenly mixed. Add the pineapple sauce to the skillet and mix well. Cook for another 5 minutes or so and you’re done.

Serve with either rice or butter noodles. If you’re a fan of broth with your rice, double the sauce mixture.

Really this is a pretty easy recipe, but it does take some time. Around 45 minutes to an hour start to finish.